Intel Pulls SSDs Over Win7 Corruption Issues

Intel has been forced to pull a firmware update for its line of solid state drives (SSDs) because of reports coming in from users that the firmware update responded badly to Windows 7, causing corruption of data stored on the drive.

This is the second time that drivers for the X25-M SSD line have interacted poorly with operating systems (though last time it wasn’t Windows 7), causing corruption and eventually being pulled. Xbit Labs has an awful lot more detail on just what Windows 7 users could have expected from the latest firmware, including potential 40% speed increase over previous. Instead, they’ve been left hanging for a second time, with many likely taking a “twice shy” approach and opting to wait and see how the firmware is received when it’s next released.

The statement from Intel doesn’t really mince words, saying that, “Intel has been contacted by users with issues with the 02HA firmware upgrade on Windows 7 systems and are investigating. We take all sightings and issues seriously and are working toward resolution. We have temporarily taken down the firmware update while we investigate.”

For now there’s no word on just when Windows 7 users can expect to have their drives functioning with the increased performance the firmware update promises, but we’d imagine it won’t be too long before Intel figures out what’s up and plugs the holes.

We’re curious to see how well Windows 7 performs with the new firmware, if only because of previous reports that Windows Vista simply wasn’t built with SSDs in mind, meaning that the performance gains weren’t as pronounced as expected. Given the way Windows 7 interacts with the drive, we could see some very interesting results once the firmware is pushed out and, y’know, not causing issues.